Aziz rejects PPP’s demand for foreign probe into Karachi blasts

Aziz told Cabinet ministers that he was confident that the investigation being carried out by Pakistani law-enforcement agencies would lead to the perpetrators of the crime.

He said the agencies had successfully investigated terrorist attacks in the past and arrested those responsible.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao has also ruled out the need for foreign experts into the investigation.

“I would categorically reject this. We are conducting the investigation in a very objective manner,” he told reporters in Islamabad.

“Our investigation teams and security agencies are competent enough to investigate such incidents. The political parties should have trust and confidence in them,” Sherpao said.

He also said that the Federal Government has directed the Sindh Government to intensify the investigation, and added that the government had not sought foreign assistance to investigate the suicide attacks on President Pervez Musharraf and Aziz.

Bhutto, however, insisted that the government should seek assistance from experts from the US, UK, France and Germany because Pakistan lacks the resources and expertise needed to investigate such incidents properly.

“Pakistan lacks expertise in cases like this, hence, a Pakistan-led inquiry should be assisted by foreign terrorism experts, forensic experts in particular,” she told reporters at the Bilawal House.

Bhutto said foreign experts could not be put under pressure or blackmailed, and added that they could trace the calls made to or by the suicide bombers and they knew the modus operandi of terrorists.

She said foreign experts were also called in after one of the attacks on Gen Musharraf, and also after the earthquake in 2005, and she had summoned foreign assistance to investigate the murder of her brother Murtaza Bhutto.

Bhutto rejected government complaints that she had defied security advice, saying “I didn’t inform them in advance because the terrorists acted on information they got in advance”. She reiterated that extremists had infiltrated the intelligence agencies.

She said that the government appeared unwilling to conduct a full inquiry into the suicide attacks on her rally. “If that’s true then some people are being protected,” she said.

“The FIR that I want to lodge has not been registered by the police yet. I’ll go to court if the police don’t register it,” the Daily Times quoted Bhutto, as saying. Ms

Bhutto demanded that she be allowed to choose the DIG and DPO of Larkana and officials of police stations near Bilawal House. (ANI)